Achieving with autism

Mom's 'Christmas Wish' is granted

CASSELBERRY -- On the waters of Lake Howell, in a 60-foot-long crew boat, Jalena Hannink grasped a long wooden oar and listened to her coach yelling instructions at her and eight other newbies.

"C'mon, you have a tail wind. This should be easy," Coach Mike Vertullo called into a megaphone the other day. "Watch your posture. Keep your eyes and nose straight. Don't be looking at clouds."

Jalena, a 15-year-old freshman at Winter Park High School, was one of a dozen novices training on the lake, but she is different in one way: She has autism.

As a nod to her crew ambitions and her academic achievements, the syndicated Tom Joyner radio show announced Wednesday that it will pay her crew dues and other fees for a year if she sticks with the sport. It was one of the "Christmas Wish" grants given to deserving people by the show, which airs on Star 94.5 FM.

"We listen every morning, and Mom didn't say anything," Jalena said with a bright smile. "Then it was like, OMG, we got it."

The program aired a brief segment of Jalena's mother, Charon Hannink of Orlando, bragging about Jalena and how she has overcome her challenges.

As Hannink has often reminded her daughter, she's not broken, she just processes information differently.

Autism is an umbrella term for a neurological condition that can take many forms. At one end of the spectrum, it is a disabling condition that can leave people barely able to speak or function. At the other extreme, autistic people can have almost genius-level abilities in math and music but have difficulties with social interactions.

Some high-functioning autistic people, such as Jalena, have few outward signs. She gets high marks in mainstream classes, plays the viola in the school orchestra and volunteers as a viola tutor at her former school, Glenridge Middle.

But getting this far took years of work, along with help from dedicated teachers, her mother said.

"When she started in kindergarten and elementary school, we could see that something was wrong," said Hannink, who works as a rural letter carrier in Lake County. "She couldn't handle sitting in class. She'd get up and shake, or go into a corner, kneel down and rock back and forth. She didn't relate well with the other children, so at playtime she'd go and be by herself and sing to the flowers."

One of the symptoms of autism is difficulty functioning in group settings.

"We had so many good teachers," Hannink said. "She had about three years in special classes, and then she'd spend half her days in regular classes, and then work one-on-one with teachers the rest of the day."

By the time Jalena finished the eighth grade, she was entirely mainstreamed, with a 3.8 grade-point average and academic awards, her mother said.

Over the summer break, she learned about the sport and wanted to join.

"My friends told me about it, and I thought it would be cool," Jalena said.

She was getting so excited about the sport, Hannink said, that Jalena was already starting to dream about competing in the Olympics.

Coach Vertullo said Jalena has the makings of a star athlete. "She has great potential. She's tall [about 6 feet], she's strong and, most importantly, she's dedicated. We run several miles a day, we weight-train, train on the machines and on the lake. . . . This takes lots and lots of hard work, and she's only missed one practice since August -- and that was because she had to play in a concert."

Her mother didn't want to discourage Jalena's shoot-for-the-moon attitude, despite the high cost of participating in crew. Monthly dues -- which cover boats and other equipment -- along with travel expenses total at least $3,000 a year.

"I'm a single mom," Hannink said. "I had no idea it could cost that much, and I had no idea where we'd get the money. But she has this aspiration, and I wanted her to go for it."

So, Hannink said, she prayed a lot. And she recalled that every Wednesday, one of her favorite radio hosts, Tom Joyner, has a segment in which the program fulfills a wish from a listener.

Hannink filled out an online form and submitted Jalena's story.

"I just got the news on Monday," Hannink said. "They're going to pay Jalena's expenses in the sport for a full year. I couldn't believe it."